Back of Whole Foods

Los Angeles area folks do not have a reputation for subtlety. Perhaps that’s one reason why this mural which doubles as a pictogram, hiding in plain sight on the back of the Venice Whole Foods, is none too subtle. Hint: the Whole Foods is at the corner of Lincoln … and Rose … get it?

1" @ 9AM • 3" @ 11AM • 4" @ 3:30PM

OK, yeah… so, second off that is a full-on rain-o-meter you see pictured above, which for better or worse definitively demonstrates the degree to which I am a raincatching geek. Seriously, I’ve been quantifying the wet stuff since I was 10 years old. I have no idea why. And if it’s any consolation, I didn’t buy the decorative contraption myself,  it was a gift from my beloved wife (probably because Susan got reeeeeal tired of me taking Sharpies to various vases/glassware and inking inch mark approximations all up and down them).

Thirdly, if you look in the background of the middle shot you can make out most of what is in fact a 9-foot-tall wooden heart leaning up against one of our trees in the backyard. That’s a longer story I won’t bore you with here, but yup: we have a rain-o-meter AND a 9-foot-tall wooden heart in our Silver Lake backyard. WIN!

But firstly: Dang if today’s cloud action didn’t dump one,two, three, four inches of precipitation between the hours of 8AM when I set the precipitometer up and 3:30PM when the storm called it a day. Of course your inch-count will vary, but still that’s pretty badass as far as water falling from the sky during the fall. I don’t have LA’s meteorological history in front of me but I’ll bet you October is typically one of our drier months and this drenching could rank as one of the biggest October storms Silver Lake — or perhaps Los Angeles as a whole — has absorbed.

Just to give you a little peek behind the b.la curtain, the nice people at Goldenvoice often grace us with delicious bundles of free tickets to their events, in hopes that we will write about them and increase attendance.

We love this – and I have to say that I love it in particular because

a. I’m too cheap to buy tickets to things, and
b. I like to feel like a bigshot.

Most of the time there are tickets a-plenty, which means the person who blogs the story gets two, and everyone who wins the contests we run gets the rest. Nice deal.

Except now. When we only get ONE PAIR of Foo Fighters tickets!

That means I have to be generous and groovy and give YOU these tickets, without even getting to go myself! Think of it! The horror!

So….

The contest is this: You tell me why YOU deserve to go more than I do, and you get a pair of tickets to FOO FIGHTERS AT THE FORUM ON THE FOURTEENTH.

Simple, right?

So get creative. Because I REALLY dig this band.

Aside from their melodramatic love song to a girl across the country, Plain White T’s, otherwise known as that band from ABC Family’s Greek, will be playing an awesome concert at the El Rey this Friday October 7th. They’ll be joined on stage with The Summer Set, The Downtown Fiction and Allison Park.

Here’s your chance to check them out! Thanks to the awesome guys at Goldenvoice, we have a pair of tickets to give-a-way to one lucky Blogging.LA reader.

Leave a comment below with your favorite Plain White T’s song and I’ll pick a winner on Wednesday October 5th @ 12PM PST. Please be sure to check your email / twitter because if I don’t hear back from you, I’ll have to pick someone else!!

And as always in case you don’t win tickets, you can always buy them here: http://www.goldenvoice.com/shows/details/?id=32912

Bonus points if you look weaker than a small child.

A lot of people in LA are looking for jobs, and today Jezebel picked up on an opportunity right here in our own back yard for any anorexics seeking gainful employment. Well, not “intentional” anorexics, according to the ad. But you know, if you just happened to stumble into your eating disorder by chance, then maybe this gig’s for you.

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Update: Winners have been notified! Congratulations!

I’ve got a secret that I can’t explain…actually, it’s not a secret now. We’re giving away TWO PAIRS of tickets to see OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) this coming Friday, October 7th at Club Nokia. I was excited when I learned earlier this year that OMD was still performing. I admittedly hadn’t thought of them in a good while, but I do have fond memories of their music I had some nice emo times listening to them and pining for a certain young man, before emo was even a thing.

If you are also nostalgic for some great 80s synth-pop and would like to see OMD live, leave a comment below (be sure to sign in with a legit email address) no later than Noon on Tuesday, 10/4.

More details on the show here.

Festive times at Hawaii Supermarket

This weekend: October, already.  A few non-food related festivals (thank God) and a lot of art (thank God).  Oh, and a blessing of the animals (thank the Gods).

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Too late.

Since leaving my outgoing mail by our house’s mailbox isn’t really an option, I’ve been in the old-school habit going on the seven years I’ve lived here in Silver Lake of walking down to the mailbox at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman.

I did just that this morning. Only this time I did a WTF having found not the familiar blue USPS receptacle, but instead just the air and space that the mailbox now no longer occupies, as pictured at right.

It was a small consolation that I timed my trip just right so as to be able to hand off my mail to the postman making his delivers there, and he said this wasn’t the only box in the area to get the hook. With a smile and a shrug he said the closest box still standing (for now) was nine blocks east at Alvarado.

Sigh.

Any boxes missing in your neck of the hoods?

Hat tip to my friend Petrea Burchard over at Pasadena Daily Photo for turning me onto On Bunker Hill this morning via a tweet.

On Bunker Hill has blogs and historical archives of the history we lost when Downtown LA grew so explosively after World War II.  George Mann has quite the historical archive of images of some of the old homes that once stood on Bunker Hill taken in the 40′s and 50′s.  (They are for sale too if you are so inclined).  A little quoted from their blog to get you interested in checking out the site:

Bunker Hill is a ghost, and though you may today walk streets named Grand and Hope and imagine that you stand where once were grand Victorian homes turned flophouses, you are in fact one hundred feet beneath the old roads, which the city shaved away to make a wider footprint for the high rise tenants that replaced them.

Its always just a little interesting to see what we have lost in the name of progress.

The Dining Deck at Santa Monica Place

Now through October 26, Santa Monica Place is screening classic “Movies on the Deck” on Wednesday nights outside on the upper dining level. Of particular interest next Wednesday night, Oct. 5, Sixties sex bomb Dyan Cannon, who has a new book out about her life with former husband Cary Grant, will make an appearance in connection with the screening of “North By Northwest”, one of Grant’s (or anyone’s) best.

The shows start at 7 p.m. Bring your beach chairs, food, & beverages, or take out from one of the many eateries at the Place. And don’t forget those layers — due to the proximity to the beach and the time of year, it may be like Hollywood Forever/Cinespia, only chillier.

We’ve been on a concert tear lately at Blogging LA with our ticket contests to see Jane Lynch, Blondie — and now Peter, Bjorn & John.  They are, of course, known for that whistling song, but they’ve done so much more that is just as great.  The band is on their “All You Can Eat” tour now, and we have tickets to give away for their October 5th show at the El Rey.  To enter, simply leave a comment with your favorite Peter Bjorn & John song other than “Young Folks“ and I’ll pick a winner by Friday at noon.

I’ll try to avoid the cliche’s any further.  I am totally amped I to give away not one, but TWO pairs of Tickets to see Blondie at the Nokia on 10/5.  Yup, that punk/new wave songstress that I have admired since college is coming to town.  Her current tour promises a great mix of the early works as well as some of the newer stuff that drifts into experimental jazz.  I think I have every album she ever made and could ramble on about her, but if you want more on her discography and bio check out her official page HERE.

What to do to win?  Sign on in the comments with a legit email addy and tell me why you want to see Blondie. I’ll pick the winners at random Friday morning and make the announcement by noon.

For those of you who don’t win you can always go to Nokia directly HERE and order your tix.

Chances are, you were a fan of Jane Lynch before she was on Glee, even if you didn’t know her by name.  She has, after all, been in literally hundreds of television shows (Fraiser, NewsRadio, Friends, The X-Files), movies (The Fugitive, Best in Show, Talladega Nights), commercials, parodies, web series, cartoons, and so on and so on and so on, paying her dues for some two decades before finally – finally – earning the recognition she deserves in Glee.  Lynch just published a memoir, Happy Accidents, that follows her journey from thespian to lesbian to comedienne; ultimately, it’s a life lesson on trusting yourself, your decisions, and your life path.  Inspirational, right?

On Sunday, Live Talks LA hosts Lynch in conversation with her former Party Down co-star Adam Scott at 7pm at Club Nokia downtown.  And we have tickets to give away!  To win, leave a comment with your favorite Jane Lynch role.  I’ll choose a winner at random on Thursday morning.  Good luck!!

House of Davids pic via b.la's la_koga

Via Curbed Los Angeles comes the news that the House of Davids is having an estate sale. Not only are the Davids themselves all for sale, but their holidays outfits, the hanging dining room table, and many other treasures of Youngwood Court will be sold off this month–including much of Norwood Young’s own wardrobe which apparently is so extensive it’s accessed via those same electric racks they use at your dry cleaner. If you looked at the pictures in Curbed’s previous post about the house you have some idea of the wonders in store for us at the estate sale.

The sale will be two weekends: October 15 & 16, and October 22 & 23. Saturdays from 9 am to 3 pm and Sundays from noon to 4 pm. Thank you Curbed for keeping us all posted about such delights.

Caught this nifty wall around Santa Monica and Hoover yesterday.  The phrase at the bottom says, “Cut it out!”